can't recall who was moaning about this yesterday, but does certainly seem to be a topic winding a few people up of late. Am wondering if there was maybe a chapter in +Guy Kawasaki 's book about sharing circles to get in circles or something...

Can't recall the last time I added a shared circle, though I sometimes will have a browse of them. The last couple of circles I did add I'm still 'sifting thru' and slowly dropping people from them and taking the quality posters and putting them in more appropriate circles.I think I've just about managed to chase down all public circles I was included in too, and ask for my removal. It just became annoying getting lots of notifications of adds to find the people who added had nothing posted or nothing in common, and were perhaps deluded into thinking there is some kind of obligation to circle people back! (a few of them were even following pages that were titled Circle Back or follow back! SMH!﻿

+Lee Smallwood I totally agree, but what is behind it and is causing the Shared Circle pages popping up is they are getting paid by businesses who want to get into as many people's circles as they can so they can Spam them to death. They probably are the same businesses people pay to get Twitter Followers and Facebook Likes. I was hoping Google would not condone this behavior but it seems they are turning their heads of this action since it is a very controversial part of building a social network. ﻿

hmmm...I thought we add people in our circles because their work inspires us and we would like to follow their work. On the other hand, I do not expect to be added on to their circle. I really don't care. When I started I had the idiotic notion that I would be excluded from Google+ if I did not have any followers. But it is becoming clear to me that somehow it is becoming a numbers game! Pft....﻿

+Colin Walker True That! That is the official company line Google Reps are telling us and I know of several dozen people joining us by actively searching out these pages and profiles popping up that are built to just share spammy circles and Reporting and Blocking them, but as of yet I have not seen any of them deleted from G+..nor has there been a comment from Google that they are doing so. I and others have also been told to complain to +Google+ Helper who we have been told have people from Google in that page who are suppose to be looking into action for Google to take on these pages. And as +Lee Smallwood mentioned..the volume of these shared circle sites is starting to turn people off to G+, so Google might need to have a public hanging or two to keep the consumers from leaving G+.﻿

It's what stopping me from doing much of anything with Circles.I seem to have been shoved into some sort of cCircle Circuit, I'm gaining X circlers per day ....... and I'm willing to bet within a month most of them simply "disappear" :(

When the whole circle push issue disappears - I may start putting together some real ones - but at the moment, it's simply not worth it.﻿

Sitting here, wondering why you directly notified me of this post. Block and mute, but why report? There are allot of G+ers that actually enjoy the circle shares, looking for new friend and such. Go ahead and try to poop on the party....for everybody, cause we all know that everyone only likes and enjoys what you do.﻿

+Circle Master circle shares with meaning are a good source of getting to know people that are interested in specific topics - but circle shares of people that just want to have more people following them don't lead to higher levels of engagement just bigger numbers! Having more people follow a profile doesn't necessarily mean that an individual is going to enioy their time in G+ more - due to the randomness of what shared interests people have. IMO having a few that simply get what a persons about is far better than having 1000s that won't check in on you from time to time and are only following in the hope of a follow back which is reminiscent of twitter(!)﻿

The only thing I regret is not having enough authentic followers to see what I have to say because I have something to say that perhaps may make a difference if I had a bigger following. I would like people to engage with me on an intellectual level or cultural or even just general interest. But that rarely happens because I do not have a bigger following. ﻿